Getting There and Waiting

We followed the state road from Zion back to US-89, where we
turned south and drove back through Kanab, then across the state line through Fredonia,
AZ, and finally across a flat plain until
the road climbed onto the edge of the Kaibab Plateau. Looking back from a
viewpoint, we could see the red cliffs on the other side of Kanab as a faint rose-colored
band in the distance, and above them the beige band of the “white cliffs” that lay beyond. The high plateau where we stood (part of the Kaibab National Forest) was mostly covered
with Ponderosa pines and junipers, but as we neared the park we ran through a
long stretch of broad green meadows. Signs warned us to beware of cattle, but
we didn’t see any — it must have been too early to bring them there to graze.
At one point, though, we did see a sizeable herd of Kaibab deer taking
advantage of the fresh meadow grass some distance from the road.

It was only 12:30 when we arrived at the Grand Canyon Lodge, which perches right
on the edge of the North Rim, at the tip of a narrow point between two side canyons, Roaring Creek and Transept. Though our cabin wasn’t ready yet, some were, so we kept
returning to the desk (a window, really) to inquire. Check-in time was
officially four o’clock, but because the park had opened the previous week and
was still short-staffed, some cabins (one of which was ours) weren’t ready
until 4:45. We used the time to look
at the incredible view from various points in the immediate vicinity.

On one of our fruitless visits to the check-in window we
heard a couple fuming and fussing because their room wasn’t ready at three,
while some of their friends’ rooms were. The woman was telling the people
behind us (who seemed to be part of a large party organized by someone else)
that this was just about the last straw and she was ready to go home. What else
had gone wrong? they asked. It turned out that whoever organized the trip made
a mistake and supplied directions to Zion National Park instead of the North
Rim. The people behind us had checked a map and avoided problems, but the irate
woman and her husband dutifully followed the directions all the way into Zion, where, finding that they were not at the Grand Canyon, they had to turn around, forfeit the $20
entrance fee they’d just paid, and go out again. Of course they arrived at the North Rim later than all their friends and were last in line for a cabin. Up at the window, I
overheard her husband informing the desk clerk that the staff's failure to
hop to it and get his cabin ready immediately was a perfect example of why the
government should not be involved in the hotel business. (Xanterra is, of
course, a private corporation, although they do contract with the government to
operate lodges in the national parks.) I suspected that some of his bad temper
might have been related to embarrassment over blindly following those bad
directions. Later, when I saw them watching the sunset with their friends, they
seemed to be in a better mood.

Sunset

My brother Steve and his wife Brenda arrived from their home
in Mesa a couple of hours before the cabin was ready, and we all took the short
trail down to Bright Angel Point, very near the lodge. There
was lots of wind, and the sky was mostly overcast.

At around five we were able to move into
the cabin, assisted by a porter who hauled our luggage from the parking lot to
the cabin in a small trailer towed by a little electric runabout something like
a golf cart. Like our cabin at Zion, it was double; we had one end and Steve and Brenda had the other — but in this case both sides shared the same tiny bathroom. This was the smallest room we had on the entire trip, but its log-cabin quaintness made up for the lack of space, and Steve and Brenda, who had brought only one suitcase from Mesa, let us stow a few of our bags in their room.

After moving in, we went back to the canyon rim, where we found the sun
peeping through and illuminating some of the canyon. This was more interesting
to see and take pictures of, so we took another walk down to Bright Angel Point, where
we prevailed on an obliging stranger to take a picture of the four of us.

As we had been told, the canyon changes its appearance in
fascinating ways as the sun descends. After coming back from the point, we
stayed outside the lodge and watched the show.

The sunset in its final moments lit
up the sky brilliantly, but not until everything else was dark.

We ate dinner in the Lodge dining room, which (like the rest
of the lodge) is impressive, still looking much as it did when the Union
Pacific Railroad built it in the 1920s. We didn't take any pictures of our own there, but this one I found on the Web will give you an idea. Of course, it can't show the spectacular views from the big windows.

We had made late reservations, at 8:30, well after sunset. It occurred an hour
earlier than in Utah, just a few miles north, because Arizona is the only state in the Mountain Time Zone that doesn’t observe Daylight
Savings in the summer. Steve explained that Arizona needs nothing, at any time of year, less than it needs extra sunshine. It
was nearly 9:30 when we finished dinner, and we all passed on dessert.

Seeing the Canyon (From One Side)

The next day dawned bright and sunny, and after breakfast in
the dining room the four of us got into Steve and Brenda’s mini-SUV, a Saturn
Vue, and set out to see some of the more distant viewpoints on the North Rim. This map shows the roads we took; at one point or another, we took all of them, both red and black. To give some idea of the scale, Cape Royal Point, our first destination, is about 22 miles from the lodge.

We stopped at several viewpoints along the
way to Cape Royal, including Roosevelt Vista, the Walhalla Plateau, the Temple of Vishnu, and
Wotan’s Throne. Other formations in the vicinity are dedicated to Rama, Shiva, Zoroaster, Freya, Siegfried, and Thor — it’s obvious that tourism began here during the 19th-century
heyday of “Aryan mythology.” (The vista named after Teddy Roosevelt is an
afterthought, inspired by his sponsorship of the National Park system, although
from some quotations I’ve seen I’m not sure he would have minded being considered
an Aryan divinity.) But not all the divinities honored were Indo-European; as you can see on the map, the Department of Egyptology begins just a few miles to the west.

We decided to save Point Imperial for sunset. (This was not a brilliant idea, since the overlook faces east, but we couldn't think of everything.) In the meantime we drove back
to the North Rim Village (where the lodge and cabins
are), bought some sandwiches, chips, and soda at the campground general
store, and ate them on the porch there. Afterwards Steve, Brenda, and I hung around
the cabin for a while. I was coming down with a cold and found that I needed to
rest. Dorothea set out on her own for a walk on the Transept Canyon Trail.
She sat for a while at the top of a stone outcropping and enjoyed the experience
of having the canyon “all to herself.” On the way back, she snapped a few
grazing mule deer.

As sunset approached, the four of us drove back to Point
Imperial, but the sky had clouded up and we found the place dark,
windy, and cold. Although it more than doubled the length of the trip, we
decided to try Cape Royal again. Here we found a
little low sun punching through, and by poking around we found some vistas we’d
missed in the morning. These were near a picnic ground and a designated
“wedding site.” The wind was still blowing fiercely — we joked about
members of bridal parties being warned against wearing full skirts, lest they find
themselves unwillingly transported to the South Rim.

Returning to the Lodge, we ate dinner at 8:30 again. We didn’t finish until ten — the service was very slow, though the waiter
was nice and seemed competent. We suspected problems in the kitchen,
but maybe the government was to blame.

The Long Way Around

We began the following day with the hot breakfast buffet
(cheaper for me than for Dorothea, who didn’t yet qualify for the senior
citizen’s discount); then we said goodbye to Steve and Brenda. They had only
one bag to pack and a longer journey ahead, since they were going home to Mesa
and we were bound only as far as Flagstaff. It didn’t take us much longer to pack, but when we were finished we had to wait for the porter
and his wee trailer to get everything back to the car.

Once on the way, we made good time on good roads in good
weather, stopping only to take a few pictures at Marble Canyon, AZ, where the
Navajo Bridge crosses the Colorado River. This
is a long way northwest of the Grand Canyon, but it’s
the closest place where the gorge could be bridged. That’s the main reason why
you have to drive more than 200 miles to get from one rim of the canyon to the
other. The first bridge, built in the late 1920s, was considered an engineering
marvel in its time, and the new one has been made as much like it as possible.
Both bridges still stand, side by side, and with the highway now running over
the new bridge you can walk out on the old one to look down into the deep
gorge. We saw a few rafts passing far below.

Marble Canyon is the stretch of Colorado River canyon that
runs north from the end of the Grand Canyon to the dam at Page, AZ, on the Utah
line. It would be about 50 miles long if it were straight as a string, but of
course it isn’t. It’s called a “slit canyon” because it’s so narrow and steep.
Of course, it’s narrow only relative to its depth; otherwise it would be easier
to bridge. As the road descends toward the town of Marble Canyon, the canyon’s
winding path in the distance looks like a knife cut squiggling across a table
top.

The dam at Page creates Lake Powell, which fills Glen Canyon
with water. In 1957, Dorothea drove through that canyon with her parents — the
dam wasn’t completed until 1963. She thought it was the most spectacular sight
she saw on that long-ago cross-country trip. In the bookstore at the Navajo
Bridge visitor center she found several books of photographs that recorded Glen
Canyon as it had looked before being flooded. It was stunningly beautiful.